Apple's averse to building its own museum, so collectors are filling the gaps.

Apple may not open its own museum anytime soon, but that's not stopping enthusiasts from putting their own Apple memorabilia on display. David Greelish is one of them. Founder of the Atlanta Historical Computing Society, Greelish partnered up with local "big-time" computer collector Lonnie Mimms to put together a museum-quality exhibit based on Mimms' extensive collection—particularly when it comes to vintage Apple products—as part of the first Vintage Computer Festival Southeast.

"I've wanted to have a classic computing convention for some years, having attended the original in California, and also the VCF East in New Jersey," Greelish told Ars. After discussing the idea with the AHCS, they came upon Mimms and his collection. "He has every significant American personal computer, plus some foreign ones too. Also some classic Intel development machines, a couple of other pre-Altair computers (Altair being the first commercially successful "microcomputer), and much, much more."

But Mimms wanted to focus specifically on Apple—partly because of Steve Jobs' recent passing, but also because of Apple's "overwhelming success and stardom." And so the two teamed together to create the Apple Pop-Up Museum, which will be part of the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 1.0 when it opens in Atlanta on April 20 and 21, 2013. In a twist of historical fate, the show will be held in an old CompUSA store, with 6,000 feet of the CompUSA regional corporate offices being used for the Apple Pop-Up museum. "[Mimms] and his staff are literally building a museum within the separate rooms," Greelish told Ars.

Why Atlanta? Greelish says it's simply because he and the other ACHS members are already based there. He pointed out that the exhibit is not in Cupertino—or even California—though the reason for that is more due to Apple's apparent disinterest in being involved in such a museum directly. Indeed, in late 2011, Stanford's Silicon Valley Archive revealed that Apple itself had originally wanted to open its own history museum, but the project got killed when Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997. "Apple is well-known for never looking back," Greelish said.

That said, there is a small selection of early Apple documentation available to the public, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The collection includes the Preliminary Macintosh Business Plan from 1981, details about executives, and more. But because of the limited access to historical Apple items, Greelish says he's open to the possibility of taking the exhibit on the road.

"It could be used in his own museum one day, or tour on its own, or even be loaned out to other museums," he told Ars. "People will walk away understanding the overall story much better, and appreciating Apple's huge impact on our personal computing experiences, communications, and entertainment methods. It's a great start for an excellent collection to be seen and enjoyed. The same exhibit principles can then be used on other 'themes' in Lonnie Mimms' collection."

So what are some of the headline items that will be showcased in the pop-up museum? Greelish says his favorites are the original Apple I and the Xerox Alto, which he considers to be the two devices that set the personal computing revolution in motion. But there will be plenty of other vintage items for visitors to check out—some of which the general public may have never even seen before in real life, such as the Apple II, the original Lisa, and even black NeXT computers. There will even be other Apple memorabilia items on display, like various 'Think Different' posters and plenty of old Apple photographs.

In preparation for the event, Greelish gave us early access to a 26-minute video interview he conducted with Mimms about his collection:

An interview with Lonnie Mimms, of the Apple Pop-Up Museum

"The items, artifacts, pictures, movies, and audio are all very important to telling the story of Apple, but I think the single most important aspect to this 'pop-up museum' will be attendees' 'aha' moment when they realize just how significant the cultural impact has been for Apple," Greelish said. "The company's products and designs have impacted most of our lives. Many people are also not aware of how long the company has been around, or the very interesting story of its beginning, the range of its other and historical products, or even the richer past of Steve Jobs, before the iPhone."

Of course, the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast will be more than just the Apple Pop-Up Museum. Greelish described it as a car show for classic computing, with exhibitors offering retro gaming displays, an original Altair, an old-school computer building workshop, and even instructional presentations like an introduction to soldering. There will also be numerous speakers giving talks on a huge variety of vintage computing topics for all ages.

"The history of the personal computer precedes even Apple's contributions," Greelish said. Still, he hopes visitors will stop by the Apple exhibit regardless of their own computing habits. "People will walk away understanding the overall story much better, and appreciating Apple's huge impact on our personal computing experiences, communications, and entertainment methods."

The problem with Apple history is it documents poached technology often claimed to be Apple inventions. For example, Apple claimed to be the first user of a switchmode PS, when clearly other computer and electronics gear had the technology.

Well, I have an Apple //e on my home workbench. Sometimes I've got other vintage hardware there too. (Atari, CoCo 3)

My Apple has a card in it that works with USB thumb drives. I can, with some work and Cider Press software, edit a file, or generate an image, etc... and do that either on the PC, or the old Apple and do something real with it. Kind of neat for such a wide technology gap.

Turn that Apple on, and it's got a little line assembler (meaning you have to calculate your branches) built in, system monitor and BASIC. If somebody wants to, they could just type a DOS in and start to using it. In fact, that's how I got the Apple bootstrapped. Got the thing, had no disks, ran a program that sent DOS over the serial port to be saved onto a blank disk. (Damn, that blank disk was hard to find...)

My favorite thing to do with the Apple is write on it. The cool old keyboard just rocks. An Apple 8 bit computer was the first computer I ever did serious writing on.

Of course, the real history is the Apple 1 and the original Apple 2. Since I actually use mine, I got the //e enhanced. Kind of want a GS, but that's getting too far away from the early, fun times.

1 Mhz. That's kind of hard to understand these days. If I write some assembly language, it seems really fast! When I go to scroll a big document, it seems kind of slow...

IMHO, efforts like this are good things. Lots of computer users now who were never there. Those of us who were range from starting to get old to old. I'm starting now... well on my way. Shit.

I think it's important for people to be able to understand what it was like. I also think having it accessible in the form of hardware people can build and run makes a lot of sense too. Computers used to be sold on the idea that people would actually write their own programs for them in addition to purchasing and using software other people wrote. Imagine that!

Glad I was there. Glad I was running Apple computers back then. You know an Apple ][ series computer is completely and totally open. One person can understand the entire machine, make their own DOS, do whatever they want to do. That's why I still have it. I can build things, put them into the computer, use them, and share them. The stuff I learned about disks, hardware, interfacing, programming, etc... from an old Apple took me a long ways.

...and maybe that's an Apple circle jerk. Who knows? What I do know is that open computer got me going and I have fond memories of discovery and learning. There was enough in the box to get people off and running. For me sometimes that meant scribbling 6502 assembly onto paper while trying to ignore history class, only to enter the lab, and either type in the hex codes to the monitor if I was in a hurry, or use the mini-assembler to build them when I wasn't only to find the program ran so fast I barely had time to contemplate it before it was done, results there good or bad...

I never convinced my parents to buy an Apple ][ so our first "PC" was a VIC-20. In high-school I did, however, learn 6502 assembler on an AIM-65 which, at the time, I thought was the coolest thing since sliced-bread.

I remember my Apple ][+ and all the upgrades made to it over the years until I moved to the world's fastest (according to PC Magazine) IBM PC.. an Everex 386/20Mhz. Programming in machine language on the ][+, with first the 6502, then upgrading to a 65C02 and trying 16 bit programming with the 65C802. Writing assembly code so it would scan through a floppy to find where my character data was stored. Adding an 80 column card so I could see upper and lower case in a full 80 columns.. It seemed like EVERYONE at the time got to know the system much better than folks do today. The magazines encouraged us to learn about the system.. learn how to program.. to learn.

I never convinced my parents to buy an Apple ][ so our first "PC" was a VIC-20. In high-school I did, however, learn 6502 assembler on an AIM-65 which, at the time, I thought was the coolest thing since sliced-bread.

I LUSTED after one of those AIM-65s. A keyboard and an alphanumeric display! I had to settle for a RCA COSMAC VIP, with 2k RAM and a hex keypad. But unlike the AIM-65 it actually had bitmapped video output, although incredibly low res (160x100, if I recall). I still have it sitting here. I got tired of loading programs off an audocassette tape once I got an Apple ][e with a diskette drive, wow! So I programmed a little timed-loop assembler program on the Apple to emulate the waveform that the audiocassette made, using the "hidden" digital outputs that the Apple had in its game controller IO port, so that I could fool the VIP that the Apple was an audio cassette, and then I could load my Cosmac programs directly from the Apple diskette. Sweet!

edit: I should try to fire that sucker up one of these days, while we still have monitors that take analog inputs.

The problem with Apple history is it documents poached technology often claimed to be Apple inventions. For example, Apple claimed to be the first user of a switchmode PS, when clearly other computer and electronics gear had the technology.

An honest display of Apple history would not be very flattering.

An "honest display" would mostly show licensing and purchasing of technology and know how instead of the poaching the Apple haters typically claim.

Does it bother you that some people like to restore and keep old wagons?

Some people like to dress up in animal suits and have sex. That doesn't make it right.

As long as no one is being hurt any sex between consenting adults is "right!"

Even if they are being hurt, as long as it's consensual.

I'm actually slightly interested in this, though I would have preferred an article that focused on the whole vintage computer aspect, rather than Mimms and "Apple is so successful, let's ooh and ahh over their history." I still have rainbow Apple stickers and my original boxes even, but lots of the old computers were cool. Commodore Vic 20s and 64s? TI 99/4a? Atari 400/800/etc? Amigas galore? Even the Trash-80 Models are nostalgia cool. I ragged on a friend's 64 with its horrible floppy load times, but I still enjoyed playing games like Beachhead on it. And so many joysticks that I went through until the CH Mach III? survived real usage. So yeah, I might get out to see it for the nostalgia factor, even if I still have a working one. (I even had NeXT brochures until this year. Packrats are us.) The appearance of Apple blinders still bothers me, nonetheless. I guess that's a personal problem that I can hang above my old Nibble magazines.